Life And Migration Under Surveillance At The U S Mexico Border

MODERATOR: Hi, everyone. | am Dave Maass, director of investigations at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. We will start with a few housekeeping things.
We will be recording this session and only video of our speakers will be
included. You can join us in the official chat via Twitch at EFF.org/livestream.
Once again that's EFF.org/livestream. Feel free to drop questions into the
chat throughout the program and our guest will answer as many as they can
at the end. If you are comfortable, you can drop a hello in the chat and let us
know what part of the you are joining us from. For those not familiar, EFF is a
nonprofit who technologists, activists, and attorneys have been fighting for
your online privacy and free speech since 1990. You are the reason EFF can
take on this support and work. If you would like to help us in this fight,
please, consider donating at EFF.org/bordersupport. Before we get into it with
our Panelists, and our host, Matthew, | am going to take you on a quick little
presentation about EFF's work at the U.S.-Mexico border. EFF has been doing
work on the border for quite some time but around 2019/2020 we started to
beef up the efforts to research what surveillance technology was being
deployed at the border. We had big plans in 2020 to do this but as you know,
plans changed in 2020 and we had to put them off for a while. Didn't stop us
researching just from going there in person. Starting in 202 it we started
doing in-depth border visits. | have mapped out all the places we have been
meeting with people whether that's activists, journalists, law enforcement
even. We did site visits to surveillance installation and headquarters. We just
drove the border trying to see what people are encountering in the
communities. We captured boast most of the border. There is still places we
need to get to but it has been an interesting journey. | want to talk about the
outcomes from the trips we have taken to the border. Right off the bat, we
had a mission to take as many photos as possible of surveillance
infrastructure. We noticed researchers and journalists have to go the CPB to
get images. Sometimes they have to get the images from Getty and it is the
same images over and over again. We wanted to provide an add to the Wiki
comments. We have been also mapping out surveillance along the
U.S.-Mexico border. We currently have a map at EFF.org where you can see
all of the specific locations of surveillance Towers. As of now, | think we have
about 550 surveillance Towers mapped out. Their precise coordinates along
with images you can click through to see what they actually look like. But we
also have done all the license plate readers and check ports and places of
entry as well as the arrow stats along the border and these are spy planes
that fly over cities in rural areas. We also were a founding member of a

coalition called Migrar Sin Vigilance which protects the human rights of
migrants throughout north and South America when it comes to digital
privacy and surveillance. We were co-authors of a report on privacy and
displacement for migrants. Now, we don't just go to the border but we go to
the border security expo most years. This is like the comcon of border
security. They have a huge showroom full of all the different technologies
that tech companies are trying to sell to border enforcement. And we have
taken all that information and built a dataset of the vendors and the
materials and what they are offering. One of the other things we are offering
is a zein of the various technologies. When we would visit the border, we
would have a binder we printed out of all the technologies we are looking for.
Every time we met with somebody, they were curious about this binder and
we realized it needed to be a resource we put in the world. We have it in
English and Spanish. We are offering hard copies through the store for the
first time today. We have given out hundreds along the border but now you
can get one yourself. Like all EFF content, it is available under the creative
commons license and you can find it elsewhere on our website. And finally,
the reason we are here today is to celebrate our new exhibit that was
installed or opened just yesterday at the historic United States immigration
station at An gel island state park. It is photos we have collected and
imparting the knowledge we have gathered called border surveillance,
places, people and technology and it covers a whole range of facet and
layers of technology as we have Senior Legislative Counsel -- we have seen
along the U.S.-Mexico border. This was spear headed by our senior Policy
Analyst Matthew who will be talking to you soon.

We would like to welcome our speakers. First up we have Matthew Guariglia,
our senior Policy Analyst here at electronic frontier foundation. Todd Miller,
co-founder of the border chronicle and one of my heroes when it comes to
United States border surveillance research. We have Pedro Rios who is
director of the American's friends service committee -- sorry. American
friends service committee U.S.-Mexico border program. One of my go-tos for
advocacy. And Petra Molnar, author of the eyes have walls, and if | didn't
have this Mexican background, you would see her book right on the shelf
right behind me. She is also the associate director of the refugee law lab.
With that, | am going to take a little step away and let Matthew take over the
discussion.

>> Matthew: Hi, everybody. Thank you for that introduction, Dave. And
Thank you to our wonderful Panelists and all viewers tuning in. | would like to
jump in and start by saying you have all been studying surveillance and the

U.S.-Mexico border for quite a while now. You know, in my other life, | ama
historian of immigration and surveillance and policing. Just in your
experience and lives, | was wondering if you could give us a sense of
continuity or time since you have been working on the use Mexico border? --
United States border? Is it just the technology evolving? What's new and not
so new? Week start with Pedro and follow up.

>> Pedro: Thank you, Matthew. Pleasure to be here with all of you. | would
say we have gone a long way from when | started doing some of this work in
the mid-90s and what one could describe being the surveillance technology
were the ground sensors used to detect when border crossers were in
whatever region. It was placed in both private and public land. So itis a
much more sophisticated endeavor now obviously from issues related to DNA
testing of migrants and to the extent where the DNA of migrants that is
shared nationally with law enforcement in their database highly surpasses
the number of people that were already in that database. The question that |
like to explore more in the city where | live is the spill over of surveillance
technologies into local jurisdictions and how local jurisdictions have adopted
surveillance technologies as a way to define what they see as smart city
progress. That has been a lot of crossover especially when there is sharing of
information whether it is done intentionally or whether it is an innocuous
sharing type of information with federal immigration agents as occurred
where | live which has been described as one of the most surveilled in the
United States.

>> Matthew: Thank you. Todd?

>> Todd.. --: Thanks and I want to say watching how much EFF has done on
the border surveillance is amazing. | have been referencing it for a long time.
It is an honor to be with Matthew, Pedro, Petra, and Dave - heroes of mine.
Just to piggyback off what Pedro was saying, | think | first came to the Novalis
border in 1995 which is the year after operation safeguard which is the
operation gatekeeper operation. Hold the line. The operations of the '90s and
the Clinton administration. And seeing some of the first, you know, remnants
of the model we have now, the Turns model and how it was built up from
there. Like the wall building that you see in the '90s and increasing personnel
on the border and technology was the third prong of this enforcement
apparatus.

And just following how this has over the ark of what, now? What's it been? 30
years? | think it is 30 years since operation gatekeeper and the anniversary
was in October? | think you can look at the budgets and they tell a story that

sometimes gets missed in the national discourse around the border. If you go
back to 1994 you see $1.5 billion and last year it was over $30 billion if you
look at custom and immigration enforcement. Looking over the span of the
operations in the '90s and post-9/11 and Department of homeland security
and SVI net or the secure border initiative and the secure technology border
programs and the virtual law and the intensification of contracts over the
span of the years | think tells a huge story. One last point | want to make on
this is also that you will see technology is sometimes contextualized as the
humane approach to border enforcement and it is anything but. In fact, you
can argue it is worse. | am just going to say it is part of the wall. When you
look at how it is put by border patrol, they have the wall, agents and
technology work hand in hand in the same enforcement apparatus and you
can see that kind of taking place right now.

>> Petra: It has been amazing to watch the work of EFF over the last few
years. | would say particularly | want to highlight the visual elements of it
from an evidentary perspective and also | think what you are doing with this
exhibit is brilliant because you are bringing it into the community for people
to engage with in a different way than perhaps they do with a book or article.
| just want to add a bit to what Petra and Todd has said. | can -- | think history
is important because we have been tracking the border technologies and the
growing violence as a result of so many of these high risk experimental
projects. At the end of the day, borders since the inception has been
historically violent. They are pred indicated on power differentials and
politics of exclusion and marginalization and systemic racism and ultimately
about making determinations about who is a worthy person to enter versus
not. And technologies are an exacerbation of this. It is important to hold this
present moment in mind given this massive intensification of tech and
money. But at the end of the day this is part of a series of policies that have
been with us for centuries.

>> Matthew: That is a good point. The border itself is a technology. It is
something that creates categories of belonging and not belonging, in and
out, and by their very nature have to be enforced if they mean anything.
That's a very good point. Let's get into the technology. When we got to the
border we could see how many types there were. It inspired so many things.
There is one in the exhibit that goes through the key categories and types of
surveillance you are likely to see. | was wondering if you could not just about
the diversity of devices that you can see within sometimes a hundred miles
of the U.S.-Mexico border but also the overlapping jurisdictions. Sometimes
when you see a device, you don't know who deployed it. It is county, local,

state, federal, vigilante even. | was wondering if we could open it up to talk
about the diversity of not just devices and what they doubt also the diversity
of agencies and burrows that have put out those bureaucracies Let's start
with you, Petra.

>> Petra: Sure. This is an ecosystem of cymene players involved in
normalizing technology -- ecosystem and the solution of so-called migration.
We aren't just talking about public sector entities but also the private sector
which is a major player in all of this. Also, | think a lot of it has to do with the
fact it is a transnational and global issue with transnational players really
setting the agenda and setting the stage in terms of what we innovate on
and why. In terms of the taxonomy of technologies it is a class that crosscuts
the type of traditional surveillance that maybe people can think of with
drones, blimps and cameras. It is experimental projects like robo dogs and
things also hidden from view and less viscerally disturbing but equally
important to pay attention to like discrimination through algorithms or using
datasets shared indiscriminately. This is essentially impacting a person on
the move at every single juncture of their journey now.

>> Matthew: Yup. Pedro?

>> Pedro: Yeah, and | think, and just kind of piggybacking a little bit on the
violence all the different types of surveillance systems cause, | reflect on the
study that researchers did about the implementation of certain surveillance
cameras along the border in Arizona and the tracking of migration routes and
how that's a tentative pushing of people into much more remote desert
terrains where the migration seemed to even take many more days which
caused a lot more loss of life. When we are considering what is much more
visible out in the field of surveillance cameras or Towers for instance, both
mobile and the ones that are fixed, cause this omni present for lack of a bet
word of describing it, of technologies that are constantly surveying people
and there have been communities that have complained about being under
watch of these surveillance Towers and not knowing what sort of technology
is being or what sort of datasets are being captured and for how long those
datasets are being retained. So along with what appears -- what is visibly
available for one to be cognizant of, the retention period is a problem as well.
What gets captured? Who has access to those datasets? And for what
purposes are they being used? During the past, datasets that ICE have held
and that information is breached and sensitive information is available to
private individuals or private enterprises that might have other intentions for
the use of that information. And | think looking at the future use of these

datasets raises a lot more alarm considering the evolution of the technology
is moving at a much more faster speed than any type of protections that we
might want to have both under constitutional protections or civil rights or
simply questions around privacy.

>> Matthew: Todd?

>> Todd: Yeah, | remember Matt when you were here and the arrow stat was
up and running and it is complete omnipresence. You couldn't avoid it. When
there is an error stat or a surveillance blimps it is always watching or at least
the feeling of always being watched is. They eventually got rid of that. Even
the Sheriff in Santa Cruz county was against that surveillance blimp. | also
remember a request for prose proposals in | think 2018 that caught my eye.
It was for a medium size drone that was silent and also had facial recognition
cameras so it could come down and take pictures of people's faces without
them knowing. | tried to follow that story. | saw the request for proposals and
| knew companies were going to test it out but | lost the threat or whether
there is a thing that exists | am not sure. Also just to think of the
crisscrossing jurisdictions. | think Petra described it well in this ecosystem
but it seems like it is an ecosystem that's mainly directed from the Federal
Government and they also lay the claim on they are in charge of border
enforcement. | do remember being in Yuma and | got information to the
Department of homeland it security money they got for doing border
surveillance. It was interesting to watch what the Yuma police department
was doing in terms of they were saying we went to the SWAT meet and were
looking for people there or the wash and were looking for people there. And
then they said we requested this technology because there is money for
these technologies. And apparently the police department and federal
government or CBP was going to work hand and hand. The other thing is the
lone star operation. For the four years of Biden we were in direct
confrontation but | wonder how much of that is true? Just going down and
spending time on the Texas border and watching on the Rio Grande patrol
boats of the United States border patrol, coast guard, the Texas wildlife
service, of the Florida state police, all of them doing patrols down the Rio
Grande. The idea of who is doing what seems to be massively jumbled and
the ecosystem is all over the place.

>> Matthew: To build on something you all brought up already, the
surveillance isn't a philosophical harm. It is like not just uh-oh | am being
harmed -- is

>> And sensitive data is being shared with governments or the
discrimination in so many algorithms. Or as Pedro alluded to the loss of life at
the border as a result of the surveillance dragnets that push people into
life-threatening terrain in the desert and at the border and we are seeing
similar trends in the Mediterranean seas as people are making their way into
European territory or along the land border between Greece and Turkey. In
my work, | have been trying to take a global perspective, and | have been
lucky to work and sometimes even live in places where a lot of this tech is
being experimented with. Absolutely, Matthew, it is a global phenomenon
where the impacts of this tech is felt on virtually every gamut. We are often
seeing technologies developed for the purposes of warfare or in the context
of Israel Palestine for the continuation of the genocide technology is started
and tested there and exported in the European Union and the U.S.-Mexico
border. So it is important to try to connect these stories across the world
because the rise of technology that is harming people is slight a global
phenomenal.

>> Matthew: Pedro, do we have a sense of the scale and harm and death
that is being caused as more and more towers and technology goes up and
driving people into more remote parts of the desert?

>> Pedro: | think it is difficult to arrive at what those numbers are and
difficult to make an assessment of how many people have been harmed. |
think certainly, and as Todd alluded to earlier, this virtual wall that was being
presented especially during the Bush years that was meant to augment the
boots on the ground that has been talked about forever in post-operation
gatekeeper in the '90s and the current strategy the border patrol depends
on. Despite so much dependence on surveillance technologies, we continue
to see record numbers of people that die as a result of their attempts of
crossing into United States precisely in part because they are crossing
through remote terrain where the ability to survive is nearly impossible in
some circumstances. It is also this culture of dependence on surveillance
technology becomes used so when someone is accosted by a border patrol
agent and there is a laws loss of life and | am thinking of 2010 in one of the
world's most crossed port of entry, the camera systems Surrounding the
border infrastructure there, were seemingly not working or not operating or
at the very least maybe the footage was lost or destroyed. So there is this
culture of surveillance that goes hand and hand with the culture of impunity
that law enforcement agencies greatly depend on in order to pursue, you
know, whatever their goals are, which in one case | would argue is the

trampling of basic civil rights and constitutional protections essentially
around the U.S.-Mexico border lands.

>> Matthew: What is the impact of all this infrastructure of communities on
the border? One thing we noticed is, you know, | think to some extent people
who live far away from the border, when they think about the border they
think about exactly this. Remote deserts with surveillance Towers. But some
of these Towers are in people's back yards, public parks, and in towns. | am
wondering if you could talk about what you have seen as the impact of this
impunity you are talking about aided by all this surveillance on actual
communities and towns and cities on the border?

>> Todd: It bring to mind the park along the border and the surveillance and
how ever present it is. To me what that brings to mind is this concept of how
violence gets normalized. And violence man faced -- manifested through
surveillance gets normalized and people start questioning it. When you
normalize the violence, people get used to it, stop questioning it, and
oftentimes until something happens that is terrible people respond. That's
part of the culture of both impunity and of militarization. Unfortunately, there
is a part of society that gets accustomed and stops questioning why it should
be there in the first place.

>> Matthew: Todd, | have a question for you, feel free to jump in on any of
other question. | am wondering to what extent border security policy, and
the desire and need for all this surveillance, is being driven by vendors?
Because that is something we are very much seeing in local law
enforcement. They are inventing a need for a lot of this tech and make a lot
of money off of it. Individual companies are getting contracts that are
sometimes in excess of a billion dollars for their surveillance
eQuiplashment -- equipment. | am wondering how much you are seeing
these companies drive the need for surveillance on the border?

>> Todd: | remember when | started looking into this and going to expos. |
went to one in 2012 and | remember talking to vendors there. Several of
them, multiple ones, | have quotes from them saying, they were vendors
selling to the US military, and one of them said where operations are starting
to wind down in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and we are looking for a
new market and hence this was one of the new markets in border security.
And putting themselves in the market and that sort of marketplace and
having, you know, you have companies of all statures. Large and small. The
large ones also have the ability to get behind closed doors in Washington to
talk to key policymakers and to get in there when they talk about

appropriations or budgets, to make sure there are companies involved, you
know, considered as new budgets come out. | remember like the
comprehensive immigration reform bill that came out in | think 2014, correct
me if | am wrong, it was the "gang of eight" one. It passed through the
Senate. But | think it was almost a thousand pages and in several of those
pages there was itemized lists of what companies were going to get and
what contracts if what was called comprehensive immigration reform bill
including $45 billion. One was getting like 16 black hawk helicopters. | would
say the industry, the way it can insert itself, and the way it can influence
policy, and the way that it is also able to give money to campaigns, makes
its influence pretty powerful.

>> Matthew: Petra, you mentioned robo dogs earlier. | Know DHS had a trial
run earlier on. We have a panel on the exist about the potential future of
border surveillance. Are robots going to play a larger role? What tech do you
see emerging? What is going to be the next generation of border
surveillance? Is the U.S.-Mexico border the most high tech? The most
futuristic of these borders you have looked at? And what is the next
generation of tech going to look like? This is coming from someone who has
a pet project is interested in antonymous weapons. What is the chance we
will see robot dogs or even drones that are going to be armed in the next few
years?

>> Petra: | think the robot dog examples is the most visceral one. It makes
you feel all sorts of ways. For the sci-fi fans in the room it was featured on a
TV show like Black Mirror. It was announced in 2022 but based on projects
piloted in the European Union the year before with terrible names like snoopy
and sniffer. The name and nomenclature behind these projects is a whole
other thing we need to look into. They are military grade pieces of
technology that can be armed. Even though it isn't exactly clear where that
pilot project went at the U.S.-Mexico border | think it signals an appetite for
this militarization of interventions that are brought out for the purposes of
border enforcement. In terms of where this might be going, definitely the
obsession or what some people call the Al arms race, is in full swing.
Debatable where Al is going to play a role perhaps in border enforcement per
se because sometimes the technology doesn't work as intended. Also
important to | think critique it from that perspective that oftentimes the
announcements are scary and the technology is scary but it is a performance
that plays into this and manifests the fears people have around the so-called
problem of migration. That's not to say we shouldn't be paying attention to
the developments happening with generative Al and more automation. |

want to bring it back to the point | made earlier. A lot of the violence happens
in places that are maybe less sexy or visceral. It isn't just about the robo
dogs but discrimtory datasets or algorithms that determine if you can enter a
county, Mary -- marry a spouse or are put in a detention center. You can't
take a picture of a racist algorithm. Those are the tools of oppression and
violence that we also have to pay attention to.

>> Matthew: And often supplied by vendors as well. There is an industry
popping up around automated decisions making and they are making
decisions about people's life and freedom around these black box propriety.
As activists and journalists who often do a lot of work on the border and
across the border, | am wondering if you yourself, have thought about, you
know, precaution use -- precautions you take with your own cybersecurity?
Issues you have experienced or colleagues have experienced in doing this
work in a setting where there is as you said a tremendous amount of
impunity, surveillance, where, you know, the rights erode as you get closer
to the border. | am wondering if you can talk about the experiences you have
had as journalists and activists.

>> Todd: Certainly. | would point to a situation a few years ago when people
were on the move in caravans arriving to the United States Mexico bord
SKWR the custom border protections together with Mexican counterparts had
secret groups in Tijuana had surveillance of people suspected in one way or
another with the organization of the migrants and this includes journalists,
activists, and humanitarian aid workers. As they were crossing into the
United States, they were put aside and put into a list. This list was made
public then. It became acutely aware that there was a specific targeting of
certain individuals. At that point, one becomes much more aprice of the fact
there is a real significant surveillance taking place of certain organizations, or
certain groups of people and population groups that are involved in
humanitarian aid support towards some of the most vulnerable people on the
planet. It does raise questions about what steps we need to take to in sure
the information that we are collecting is safeguarded, and that our own
personal information is safeguarded. Particularly in a world where there are
many more people that are taking to that sort of rightwing approach going
up to our faces and taking video of us, calling us human smugglers. As we
work at a solidarity aid station along the border. There is much more
pappable danger and the measures we have to take for security have to be
top notch.

>> Yeah, | definitely agree. There is always in consideration as a journalist
that covers these things, but just thinking about the incident that Pedro is
talking about, or the incidents involving other journalists and activists, and
you know, just thinking about -- | think at one point the ACLU called the
hundred mile jurisdiction around the U.S.-Mexico border and that could
include the coast, and you know, the northern border as well, that hundred
mile jurisdiction that includes two 3rds of the United States population like
over 200 million people as a constitution-free zone. | did that that in an
article and an ACLU person said please don't. And maybe we should call it
the constitution zone. The fact of the matter is if you go through like it
comes -- | was just in Mexico for a week doing research. | am just getting
back right now. | had to consider crossing the border, understand that the
actual border crossing that all rights are gone in that moment of crossing the
border. They could take you into secondary interrogation. That's happened to
me. | was surprised the last time | went into it, they shut the door and locked
it. So | guess you are detained. They can confiscate your devices. That
happens on the regular. This time | didn't even take my laptop with me. | just
took my phone. | was fine coming back and forth. But considerations and the
sort of things that you have to think of as you move through this territory
and this sort of extra constitutional power | guess you could call it that the
forces or the border forces can wage on are definitely constantly in
consideration.

>> Matthew: This is where | will plug our surveillance self-defense guides at
EFF which include guides for journalists crossing the border and want to
safeguard the data they have been collecting and their drafts. Now we will
turn to questions from the audience. The first one | will start us out scary and
we will, hopefully, get a little more optimistic. For each of you, what is one
piece of technology actively in the field or that you see emerging that you
are most concerned about? What's the one piece of technology that keeps
you up the most? Whether it is, you know, as exciting and photographable as
a robot dog, or as kind of insidious and hidden as algorithms? We will start
with Petra.

>> Petra: That would be an Al lie detector. This was a pilot project pushed
forward in the European Union called | border ctl. Essentially this was a
project that tried to create for lack of a better word an Al lie detector that
uses facial recognition or micro facial analysis to make determinations about
whether or not a person was telling the truth at the border and being
screened for secondary processing as a result. So much to say about this.
First of all, it was funded by horizon 2020 with an academic institution

involved. With someone who has one foot in academia, | think it is important
to critique what academics do to legitimize projects. How can an Al lie
detector deal with differences in cross cultural communication? | have
represented people when | used to practice law who didn't make eye contact
with a judge of the opposite gender because of religion, their experiences,
nerves, or what about the impact of trauma on memory and the fact we
don't tell stories in a linear way? Human decision makers struggle with this
so how can an Al lie detector be better at this?

>> Matthew: Pedro?

>> Pedro: There is so much. | would say | refer to it earlier the collection of
DNA and oftentimes DNA is being collected without the individual's consent.
They have no idea that this is being done for this purpose when border patrol
agents swab inside their mouth to collect DNA. And goes to the question
around retention and who has access to that information. Whether that will
be available to a private entity that then might use it to profit from.
Everything with the collection of biometrics raises a lot of questions and
alarm for me. Especially as we are seeing that there have been so many
breaches that even the government can't control and that the dataset here is
so much and could also be used for discriminatory practices. | believe when
the slippery slope is criminalization and targeting individuals. That one of the
things that mostly concerns me as we move forward around border
enforcement.

>> Matthew: EFF has written a lot about DNA collection. It is predicated on
the fact immigrants in the United States are more inclined to commit crimes
and we must have all this DNA even though no statistics support that fact.
Todd?

>> Todd: Two quick ones. One goes along the lie detector that Petra next and
one developed at the University of Amazon where | live in Tucson. It was
called the Abtar kiosk and you put your finger in it and it tests the different
physiological states you are in. | thought that was the most ridiculous thing
because people get NEFSHZ nervous immigration control no matter what.
The terror of facing somebody is omnipresent and also along with the thing
Petra mentioned. One quick thing about the robo dog, | talked extensively
with the vendor, and what was their slogans? Robots that feel the world. We
started showing me how you could weaponize the robo dog and insert a gun
on it. He showed me how they use algorithms and artificial intelligence. He
showed a robo dog and quad red squares and said the Al is detecting targets.

He said don't worry, we pull the trigger. The combination of Al, robo dog
drone thing, and the sort of terror that companies -- all of this.

>> Matthew: Yeah. What regions or communities on the border should we be
talking more about? And | will open this up beyond the U.S.-Mexico border if
you would like. If you want to talk about the Canadian border or Europe or
somewhere else in the world, what regions and what border regions do you
think people aren't talking enough about that people should be paying more
attention to. Start with you, Pedro.

>> Pedro: | would say from the perspective of the U.S.-Mexico border, |
would say areas that have fewer organizations that are concerned out right
and not as well-resourced to address these issues. If we look at California, for
instance. The Imperial county doesn't have the same support networks one
would want to have and tend to be overlooked when it comes to funding.
Tends to be overlooked whether it comes to even just resources. There is the
detention facility located there that is much more difficult to access even for
attorneys representing people that are detained there. Being able to access
these remote areas where there are not a lot of resources and where poverty
tends to be a bigger real life issue that impacts people's daily lives. And
where | would see then the implementation of surveillance technologies
becomes an easier way of pushing where there isn't as much resistance,
precisely because the resources aren't there to resist that technology. | have
been in conversation with colleagues there in the past and just the amount
of support they need is tremendous. Oftentimes we are not able to provide
that support. They don't necessarily have the resources to move forward in
the way they would want to.

>> Matthew: Todd?

>> Todd: I might say both the United States-Canada border and also the
Mexico-Guatemala border. United States-Canada border in the sense you are
in the hundred mile zones. | did research in some counties right along the
New York border like Ontario and farm workers, undocumented farm workers
were getting targeted by border patrol operating in the area because of the
border but doing internal enforcement, and also the consistent presence in
Amtrak station and greyhound stations and looking for people all along the
border. And there is technology. You have the different camera systems.
Those sorts of things. The extension of the United States border propelling
into Mexico and it is training and resource transfers including technologies to
the Mexican government and the south. And how that's become one of the
big huge fronts of the United States border. Those are two places | would

definitely keep an eye on. Especially going forward in the Trump
Administration since a lot of focus is in the unanswered places.

>> Matthew: Petra?

>> Petra.| would maybe remind us of the linkage of border separation like
Pakistan and ongoing in Congo. There is another element we haven't touched
on and that's the labor element. The fact Al and labor go land and hand
when we think about how much data we need to actually power a lot of the
systems that the global north relies on. Much of this labor happens in places
like east Africa, Bangladesh, India, where people are doing really terrible
work either when it comes to content moderation, or data exploitation and
other ways for pennies. Not to mention the kind of politics people go into
which people rightly call neo colonialism or data colonialism so labor issues
are important to think about.

>> Matthew: The final question is what are the most important things we
can do to protect vulnerable communities or encourage change at the
border? | will broaden that to say what are efforts you see happening right
now that are giving you hope. Petra, we will start with you -- Pedro.

>> Pedro: | will say as much as possible, and something we have been doing
is hosting know your right presentations. These were being held with
undocumented community members. Now the interest is so fast that we are
doing presentations to schools, to churches, to even museums. When some
specific individuals are targeted because they have a different relationship
with the nation state, they too can be eventually targeted as we have seen in
different cases around the country. As much as we are able to generalize the
concept we have rights and the ability to force those rights those moment
whereas they might be questions. That offers people to defend those rights.
It is not only important to know the rights but understand how to defend
them.

>> Matthew: Yes, and from what | understand, those trainings around the
country have been particularly effective. Petra?

>> Petra: | think what gives me hope is to also think about who actually gets
to determine what we innovate on and why. Squaw gets to imagine and a
conversation about how we really need to make space for expertise and
coming from effective communities. This something we do called the
migration technology monitor where we look with colleagues on the move
doing their own work on borders and security and technology. Who gets to

take up space to take up these issues. | think we can and should work
differently because there is so much expertise on the ground already.

>> Matthew: Yeah, | think that's one of the things that motivated us to spend
a lot of time on both sides of the border talking and hearing from people who
are experts and know more about the powering differentials and border
surveillance than | ever will. Yeah. Todd?

>> Todd: | mean, honestly, all the work that all of you are doing. Like what
Petra mentioned, migration technology monitor, and you know, what Pedro
does, and what you do at EFF, those are seriously really important, you
know, examples of pushing back. And | just want to say also, when you take
the border systems internationally and look at them for what they are, | can
see them as like this massive scaffolding for a status quo of an unjust world.
There is one way this unjust world keeps on going forth. The importance | see
of, you know, that sort of undermining that and maybe that's through a lot
of, what Petra is talking about in terms of cross border collaborations, and
movements, and solidarity and that the sort of, | think the sort of
internationalization of movements you can see it here and there and in
different collaborations. | think that gives me, you know, that would give me
the most hope going forward. That's the source of challenges to this
structure of borders that we find ourselves in right now.

>> Matthew: Thank you so much for being here and coming to talk about
this. And for acknowledging the work EFF has been doing over the last few
years. You know, the new exhibit that is coming out right now that just
opened on Angel Island. | hope all you have get a chance to take the ferry
out and see it. That's all we have time for. | want to officially thank Dave,
Todd, Pedro, and Petra for joining us today. Thank you to everyone who
contributed to the discussion in chat and all the great questions. Digital
rights begin with you. EFF has been a leader in privacy, freedom of
expression and innovation for 36 years and we need your help to keep up the
fight. Please become a member at EFF.org/bordersupport. A new URL just for
today. We hope you will join these conversations with your civil liberty
colleagues and your friends. Be sure to keep an eye out for future events by
visiting EFF.org/events. Thank you all for joining. We will see you next time
for another EFF live event. Thank you all.